Medicines can be delivered in the shape of a pill or tablet. These pills or tablets provide a dosage of medicine that can be administered to the patient. Oftentimes the amount contained in the tablet is more than is required for a patient and in order to get the proper dosage it is convenient to split the tablet in half or even quarters. Oftentimes the individual patient is requested to split his own medicine dosage of tablets to the proper dosage. To achieve this, a variety of pill cutters have been provided, almost all are designed to cut a single pill of a particular size. Some of these are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,474,525; 7,275,671; 7,000,815; 5,118,021 and U.S. design Pat. No. 467,664. Each of these pill cutter or pill splitter devices has a limitation as it can handle only one pill at a time. In U.S. design Pat. No. 305,960 a two pill compartment is provided on a hinged surface.
When a patient needs to cut a plurality of pills or more than one pill, very few devices are available. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,344 a multi-pill cutter is described which accomplishes the objective of allowing a number of pills to be cut simultaneously. In order to achieve this, a resilient pad has been put in a container; the pad has a plurality of holes in it to accept pills of a particular size. This pad holds the pills directly above a plurality of cutting blades; as the top cover which includes a second solid resilient pad is closed, the pills are pushed against a blade and are split. This advantageously enables a large number of pills to be simultaneously cut in half. As shown in this prior art patent, approximately 30 pills of an oblong shape can be cut. A disadvantage of this design is that to provide different sizes, different pads have to be provided with different hole sizes. Therefore, the device is limited to one particular size pill. As further illustrated, the resilient pad on the top cover must press down on the pill in such a fashion that each pill is cut, in order to accomplish this in such a large base the pressure has to be uniformly applied such that one does not push on one side or the other of the container or top lid in such a fashion that the load is not uniform and therefore pills at one end of the device are not cut through.
Accordingly, while this device achieves the goal of cutting simultaneously as many as 30 pills, it does so in such a fashion that it is limited to one particular size per cut and further by the fact that it can only cut the pills in half. This device is further limited by the fact that it requires a rather strong uniform pressure to achieve a desired breaking of all the pills.
In still another embodiment described in US publication 2009/0031872 an automatic pill cutter is illustrated wherein large supplies of pills can be cut automatically which enables the dispensing of large numbers of pills to be achieved. The drawback of this particular automated device is likely expensive and is ideally suited mainly for a pharmaceutical company as opposed to an individual patient or pharmacy.
To overcome these drawbacks of cutting pills to achieve a reduced dosage for a patient, the present invention provides a means of cutting a large number of pills simultaneously, while also accommodating a variety of different sized pills such that a variety of pill sizes can be cut simultaneously to achieve dosages in a half or even a quarter.